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Wole Soyinka's ‘Death and the King's Horseman’, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Martin Rohmer
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Abstract

In large part due to the relative lack of productions in Europe, the plays of Wole Soyinka have mostly been approached from a literary point of view rather than analyzed as theatrical events. Because the plays rely heavily on non-verbal conventions, this neglect of visual and acoustic patterns promotes an incomplete understanding of Soyinka's idea of theatre. Here, for the first time, a play by Soyinka is analyzed from the point of view of performance – specifically, the production of Death and the King's Horseman staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1990. Martin Rohmer examines the transformation of playscript into mise-en-scène, focusing in particular on the use of music and dance, but looking also at the production as an intercultural event – asking not only how far a European company has to rely on African performing skills, but how far a European cast and audience is capable of a proper understanding of the play. This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Conference of the Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English, held in Bayreuth in June 1992. Martin Rohmer studied Drama, German Literature, Anthropology, and Philosophy in Munich, and Theatre, Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow, before completing his MA in Munich in 1992. Presently he is a Research Assistant at the University of Bayreuth, where he is working on a PhD on the performing arts in Zimbabwe.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 37 , February 1994 , pp. 57 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes and References

1. Scolnicov, Hanna, ‘Theatre Space, Theatrical Space, and the Theatrical Space Without’, in Themes in Drama, Vol. IX: The Theatrical Space, ed. Redmond, James (Cambridge, 1987), P. 22.Google Scholar

2. See Fraser, D., ed., The Royal Exchange Theatre Company: an Illustrated Record (Manchester, 1988), p. 22.Google Scholar

3. Soyinka, Wole, ‘Who's Afraid of Elesin Oba?’, in Wole Soyinka, Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture, ed. Jeyifo, Biodun (Ibadan, 1988), p. 116.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 39.

5. Soyinka, Wole, Death and the King's Horseman, in Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1984), p. 146. All further quotations and the page numbers indicated in the text are taken from this edition.Google Scholar

6. According to Thompson, R. F., ‘vital aliveness’ and ‘vitality’ are basic aesthetic categories of African dance. See his African Art in Motion: Icon and Act (Los Angeles; Berkeley; London, 1974), p. 7 and 9.Google Scholar

7. See, for example, Amankulor, J. N., ‘Ekpe Festival as Religious Ritual and Dance Drama, in Drama and Theatre in Nigeria, ed. Ogunbiyi, Yemi (Lagos, 1981), p.113–29Google Scholar. Amankulor's depiction of this festival reveals remarkable parallels to the Manchester production concerning spatial structure, the importance of the circle, movement, direction, and content (the importance of a ritual sacrifice for the welfare of the community).

8. Thompson, R. F., op. cit., p. 27.Google Scholar

9. These are not to be mistaken with the drummers in the secret place ‘Osugbo’. The drummers on stage (i.e., the ‘market drummers’) are hired by Elesin and play mainly for the celebration itself, while the osugboplayers are in charge for the correct timing of the ritual.

10. Richards, David, ‘Owe l'esin oro, Proverbs like Horses: Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman’, in Journal of Commonwealth Literature, XIX, No. 1 (1984), p. 95.Google Scholar

11. Soyinka, Wole, Myth, Literature, and the African World (Cambridge, 1976), p. 36.Google Scholar

12. Maduakor, Obi, Wole Soyinka: an Introduction to his Writing (New York, 1986), p. 269.Google Scholar

13. Soyinka, Wole, ‘The Fourth Stage’, in Myth, Literature, and the African World, op. cit., p. 147.Google Scholar

14. A guttural voice as indicating a supernatural being is a common phenomenon in African ritual. See, for instance, Lifschitz, Edward, ‘Hearing is Believing: Acoustic Aspects of Masking in Africa’, in West African Masks and Cultural Systems, ed. Kasfir, S. L. (Tervuren, 1988), p. 221–9.Google Scholar

15. Kubik, Gerhard, ‘Verstehen in afrikanischen Musikkulturen’, in Musik in Afrika, ed. Simon, Artur (Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, 1983), p. 322–3.Google Scholar